Theatre Review: Curtains (Rose Theatre, Kingston)

Its title gesturing cheekily both to the issue of death that’s at its centre, and to the domesticity that constitutes its context, Stephen Bill’s 1987 play Curtains takes a well-worn dramatic situation – a family gathering to celebrate a birthday – in order to explore mortality and the still-controversial issue of the right to die. The birthday girl here is Ida, a pain-wracked and wheelchair-bound 86-year-old whose family – daughters Katherine and Margaret, their spouses Geoffrey and Douglas,  and Katherine and Geoffrey’s son Michael -  seem almost maniacally determined for her to have a jolly good time. Naturally, the day springs some surprises, not least the return to the fold of the youngest daughter, Susan, after a 25-year absence, and the fulfillment of Ida’s own long-held birthday wish.       

Lindsay Posner’s bright revival for Kingston Rose, with its excellent cosy/shabby living room set by Peter McIntosh  (peeling wallpaper, trifle on the table, sunlight through a stained glass window), makes the production itself a mini family get-together by casting the playwright’s son Leo Bill as Michael, the 20-something grandson who, along with the practical neighbour Mrs. Jackson (fine Marjorie Yates) has been Ida’s principal carer. Bill, brilliant in everything from The Glass Menagerie to The School for Scandal to The Silence of the Sea, manages to make something distinctive and interesting of what could be a weak role, relishing Michael’s love of a bad joke and cake-scoffing, while hinting at the insecurities and anger beneath.   

Indeed, Posner’s production opens altogether superbly, with some funny, painful and well-observed interactions. A devastatingly good Sandra Voe conveys, with a minimum of dialogue, Ida’s frustration, anger and sheer weariness, as the reluctant birthday celebrant endures her family’s strained, well-meaning attempts at joviality. Despite roving accents, Saskia Reeves, Wendy Nottingham and Caroline Catz  make a good, strongly contrasting sibling trio. (The play can be seen as another Three Sisters variant, of sorts.)

If the second half is less successful, it’s down to the play’s recourse to a too-strident debate on the central issues, one that feels rigged. An element of harangue creeps into the approach, as the playwright's intentions become too obvious. Tim Dutton brings some sharp, wry humour to his performance as  Douglas but the character is too transparently the play’s mouthpiece, and without effective opposition, the drama's interest wanes. 

Still, even if this Alan Ayckbourn-meets-Amour evening doesn’t quite make good on its initial promise, it remains worthwhile for some potent moments, such as the screwy everyday Englishness of Reeves’s nervy Katherine confessing: “I had a breakdown …  I don’t think anyone knew about it.”

Curtains is booking until 17 March. Further information here. 

Theatre Review: The Vortex (Rose, Kingston)

Timothy Dalton, Rupert Everett, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Will Young: it’s a diverse range of contemporary actors who’ve been drawn to play Nicky Lancaster in Noël Coward’s The Vortex – the part that Coward devised for himself in the play that made his name in 1924. It’s not hard to see why, perhaps: the role of the talented, neurotic, coke-addicted young composer has a straight-up melodramatic appeal that’s hard to resist. Stephen Unwin’s new production of the play at Kingston’s Rose casts David Dawson (of the Donmar’s Luise Miller and the Royal Court’s Posh) as Nicky, with Kerry Fox as his mother Florence, the ageing beauty who’s presented as the cause of much of her son’s self-destructiveness and angst. And while lacking the charged-up, close-up intensity of Michael Grandage’s production at the Donmar ten years ago, Unwin’s sleek revival proves a highly engaging staging of one of Coward’s most potent plays.

Daring in its day – “un peu shocking,” in the words of its own author – The Vortex still has power and punch, as Coward views the decadence of the 1920s upper-class with a mixture of fascination and critique. The chief object of his disapproval is Florence: a socialite who keeps herself occupied with a string of toy-boys in order to hold back the years. But the principal emotional interest of the drama lies in the damaging effect that Florence’s behaviour has on Nicky, with tensions coming to a head when the young man returns to the family fold from Paris, only to discover that his mother’s current squeeze, a Guards Officer named Tom (Jack Hawkins), is a former beau of his own fiancée Bunty (Sophie Rundle).

The play’s move from classic Cowardian quippage to a final soul-baring duologue between Nicky and Florence that’s more than a little reminiscent of the Hamlet closet scene (with a touch of Ibsen’s Ghosts on the side) is challenging. But Unwin’s production remains alert to the play’s sharp shifts of mood and navigates them nicely, despite excessively jaunty music from Olly Fox and a design by Neil Warmington that has some questionable ideas (especially in the final scene) along with some clever ones (dig the red lips sofa!)

Key to the play’s success is the subtle complexity of its characterisation. There’s a whiff of misogyny, perhaps, in the presentation of Florence – a self-absorbed “Mommy Dearest” whose behaviour has broken both her husband (sympathetic William Chubb) and her son. But it’s offset by an edgy compassion, too. And Kerry Fox – a surprising casting choice for Florence – digs out the character’s underlying fears and insecurities while also conveying her vanity and casual cruelty, endowing Florence with a memorable tragic grandeur. She’s well-matched by the compelling Dawson who conveys both petulance and real pain as the tormented son. In recent years, it’s become commonplace to view part of Nicky’s “problem” as repressed gay desire, of course, and that idea is certainly implicit here, in the ironic spins that Dawson puts on certain lines and the sham that Nicky’s engagement to Bunty is shown to represent.

As the other members of Florence’s gossipy circle, James Dreyfus tosses out bitchy quips with panache and Helen Atkinson Wood gets some fruity comic moments, while Rebecca Johnson – too rarely seen on stage in recent years – brings exceptional candour and sensibility (plus an unexpected touch of Sapphic desire) to her role as Florence’s confidante, whose task it is to alert both mother and son to the possibility of a life beyond the destructive social vortex. Recommended.

Runs until 2nd March.

Reviewed for The Public Reviews.

Theatre Review: Korczak (Rose Theatre, Kingston)

From the story of Janusz Korczak - the Polish-Jewish doctor who founded a revolutionary orphanage movement in Poland and stuck steadfastly by his young charges during the Nazi invasion of the country - Youth Music Theatre have fashioned a compelling and moving musical. Nick Stimson’s production is having a very short run at Kingston’s Rose Theatre, and is well worth catching if you possibly can.

Korczak’s story was the subject of a (rather controversial) 1990 motion picture directed by Andrzej Wajda, a film that was widely recognised as an influence on Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. Here, however, director Stimson (who also wrote the book and lyrics), composer Chris Williams and a 44-strong cast create an involving, purely theatrical experience designed to engage audiences of all ages.

Even as it effectively opens out the action into the Rose auditorium (there are no “pit cushion” places as is usual at this venue), Liz Cooke’s design manages to suggest an enclosure of sorts, an apt approach for a piece in which issues of entrapment and escape are central. An expressive sound design by Jamie Flockton and Tim Skelly’s excellent lighting (along with some judiciously employed video projections) enhance the atmosphere, as the action moves from the orphanage founded by Korczak (Peter Straker) in the countryside to the Warsaw Ghetto.

By turns dramatic and delicate, Williams’s score nicely compliments the structure of the piece which juxtaposes effectively staged crowd sequences (in which Yael Lowenstein movement direction is particularly fine) with intimate two- or three-character scenes that offer vivid yet nuanced sketches of the orphans’ individual experiences and histories.

The work of the young ensemble is solid across the board, but especially impressive are the heart-rending, dulcet-toned Jo Moore, as Staszek, clutching tightly to the bird-cage that serves (a tad insistently) as one of the primary symbols of the piece, and Hannah Thompson who brings a riveting, beyond-her-years intensity to her role as the wilful Gienia. Harry Child and Ross Munro are a superb double-act as Bula and Izak, and the development of their characters’ relationship provides the narrative with perhaps its most dramatically compelling and unexpected arc.

Straker invests Korczak with gravitas and intelligence. The actor delivers an expertly modulated (and arrestingly sung) performance that communicates the character’s innate goodness even as it undercuts any air of sanctity, while Lewis Clarke brings a genuine sense of threat to his representative Nazi (billed simply as “Tormentor”).

The tensions and alliances among the group are sensitively teased out, especially in the affecting triangle that develops between Lindsay Atherton’s Jewish Golda, Joel Fisher’s Catholic Marek and Nicola McAllister half-Jewish Basia.

Skirting sentimentality yet full of feeling, Stimson’s fluid production serves, ultimately, as a testament to the power of story-telling and the resources of the human imagination in the most brutal and iniquitous of circumstances. Building to a climax that is at once hopeful and devastating, this is a stirring production of genuine poignancy and emotional power.

The production runs at the Rose until 3rd September. Further details here.